Autonomy policy no solution to Aceh conflict<\/p>\n
Santi WE Soekanto
\nThe Jakarta Post
\nJakarta<\/p>\n
Another year is whizzing by leaving Aceh with wounds agape and
\nquestions unanswered. Hardly a day in 2001 has gone by without
\nmurders being committed in the strife-torn region -- the
\nIndonesian Red Cross workers in Aceh recently testified that over
\nthe past year at least 1,500 people have been killed while
\nthousands of others will carry lifelong scars, both physical and
\nmental.<\/p>\n
Even the Red Cross's figure has been described as conservative
\nbecause other estimates put the death toll from various violent
\nincidents that took place after the launching of the so-called
\npeace talks between Jakarta and separatist fighters, at around
\n6,000. No day in this war is apparently sacred enough to prevent
\nboth the security personnel and the armed Acehnese separatists
\nfrom engaging in violence because the murders continued even
\nduring the fasting month of Ramadhan. The casualties came from
\nvarious quarters -- the military and security personnel, the
\narmed separatists but mostly among the innocent, unarmed
\ncivilians.<\/p>\n
The year opened for Aceh with a degree of cautious optimism as
\nan agreement between the government and the separatists to cease
\nviolence was nearly successful. The accord was soon broken and
\nlawlessness prevailed. The loss of thousands of lives has
\ncontinued without legal redress ever having even been considered,
\nlet alone actually carried out.<\/p>\n
In separate incidents in January, for instance, a umber of
\nmilitary and police personnel were shot dead by unidentified
\nassailants. On Feb. 3, an armed mob attacked the housing complex
\nof a state-owned plantation company, PT Perkebunan I Langsa, in
\nEast Aceh district and killed three workers. On Feb. 25, another
\nunidentified group of assailants attacked and killed a married
\ncouple -- as their four small children witnessed the horror -- in
\nthe same region.<\/p>\n
Early in March, the Langsa hospital some 435 kilometers east
\nof the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, received the bullet-
\nridden bodies of ten men executed by an armed group of assassins.
\nThe best that the police could do was issue an empty promise to
\nhunt down the perpetrators. Also in March, gun battles between
\nthe security authorities and separatist guerrillas on the eastern
\ncoast of Aceh claimed 11 lives.<\/p>\n
On March 20, the helicopter carrying then-minister of energy
\nand mining Purnomo Yusgiantoro on his visit to the American oil
\ncompany ExxonMobil was shot at. The direct result of the incident
\nthat was blamed on the independence-minded fighters was Jakarta's
\ndeclaration to impose a controversial \"limited military
\noperation\" in the region.<\/p>\n
In May, unidentified assailants gunned down the chairman of
\nthe provincial branch of Golkar, HT Djohan, when he was leaving
\nthe Baiturrahman Mosque in Banda Aceh. \"We are chasing whoever
\ndid this,\" said Aceh Besar police chief Sayed Husaini. A former
\ndeputy governor of Aceh, Djohan spoke out in February against
\nprotracted violence in the region and called for all involved
\nparties to sit together and take counsel.<\/p>\n
In the following month, a policeman died in a grenade attack
\nin front of the house of the Aceh Police deputy chief. By mid-
\nJune, full-scale armed clashes between security personnel and the
\nindependence fighters from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in
\nBandar, Central Aceh, resulted in the death of six people and the
\nexodus of thousands of residents to the capital city of Takengon.
\nHundreds of houses and other property were burned to the ground.
\nThe total number of people killed within those ten days of
\nviolence as at least 45.<\/p>\n
More atrocities were revealed shortly thereafter, also in
\nJune, with the discovery of 31 bodies in Central Aceh by Red
\nCross workers. This followed the discovery of 27 corpses
\nfollowing battles between the military and GAM. \"Only six of the
\nbodies could be identified, while the rest were badly disfigured
\nto the point that identification was not possible,\" said one
\nworker.<\/p>\n
More deaths took place in July and August, when two children,
\naged eight and ten, were apparently tortured and found dead
\noutside of Banda Aceh. Riska and Hafiz El Arif were the children
\nof Police Brig. M. Zein of the Aceh Besar Police Precinct. Again,
\npolice promised to investigate and reveal who was behind the
\nbrutality.<\/p>\n
Also in August, 31 armed assailants killed workers of a palm
\noil plantation in East Aceh. \"Our small clinic is now full of
\ncorpses,\" a horrified Dr. Munawir exclaimed at a local village
\nhealth clinic. Both sides blamed each other, however
\ninternational rights groups seemed to indict military personnel,
\nby reporting that the massacre did not fit with the GAM modus
\noperandi.<\/p>\n
In September, local legislator Zaini Sulaiman was shot to
\ndeath by a group of unidentified \"guests\" shortly after he
\nperformed the dusk prayer. The \"guests\" knocked and opened fire
\nas soon as he opened the door. Police blamed the assassination on
\nGAM, who denied responsibility and told the police they had
\nbetter come up with hard evidence before slinging accusations
\nevery which way. \"In Aceh today, GAM personnel are not the only
\nones with weapons,\" said GAM spokesman Ayah Sofyan, referring to
\ngovernment security authorities.<\/p>\n
Numbing statistics aside, one murder sent shockwaves across
\nall of Indonesia. Dayan Dawood, the chancellor of the respected
\nSyiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, was shot dead when he was
\ndriving his car home from campus. This came almost a year after
\nthe killing of Professor Safwan Idris, the chancellor of the Ar-
\nRaniry State Institute of Islamic Studies. Again, both sides
\nblamed each other for the murders, and any investigations have
\nbeen fruitless.<\/p>\n
Dawood's death caused an uproar, not only because he was a
\nrenowned scholar, but also because his assassination took place
\nshortly after the visit of President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
\nMinister of National Education Malik Fadjar was outraged,
\npointedly saying that \"the late Dawood was a teacher, not a
\npolitician\" and that his assailants must be out of their minds if
\nthought there was any reason to kill him.<\/p>\n
The security authorities readily lay the blame on GAM, but
\ncould not prove anything. GAM again denied the accusation and
\naccused the military or police. An element of surprise was lent
\nby then-Ambassador of the United States to Indonesia Robert S.
\nGelbard who told the press immediately afterward he was shocked
\nby the murder of Dawood with whom he was apparently close.<\/p>\n
\"Another death in Aceh today would be one to many,\" said
\nGelbard, who visited the region on a mission, re-affirming
\nWashington's commitment for the unity of Indonesia and its
\nopposition to any separatists groups in any country which use
\nterrorist tactics.<\/p>\n
Less than two weeks later, another death, this time that of a
\nman clad in military-style fatigues, was reported in Bireuen,
\nfollowed by the massacre of a family in Pidie district. Diana,
\n60, Ambiah, 35, and Fajar, an infant, were hacked to death in the
\nearly morning hours of Sept. 28 by a group of, again,
\nunidentified men. Another session of accusation and counter-
\naccusation ensued between the military and the separatist
\nmovement, and more promises to investigate were again repeated.<\/p>\n
Violence claimed more lives in October, November and December
\ndespite Vice President Hamzah Haz's assertion that the government
\nwould scale back its \"excessive\" militaristic approach in the
\nregion. Another lawmaker, Ghazali Usman, was kidnapped by GAM
\nwhile other rights abuses continued unabated.<\/p>\n
When one reads the hundreds of news stories about the almost
\ndaily atrocities in Aceh, one soon shifts from being horrified to
\nfeeling tired and numb because of the frequency with which the
\nviolence takes place. But one also may sense a pattern in the
\nvicious cycle of violence in the resource-rich region, where
\narmed rebellion began in 1976, followed by a decade-long counter
\ninsurgency military operation during which egregious violations
\nof human rights occurred.<\/p>\n
Most people would think that in the relative absence of
\nforeign threats to Indonesia (in fact, the Indonesian Military is
\ncurrently basking in the renewed support of the United States and
\nBritain as evidenced by the resumption of the arms trade \"as long
\nas they are not used for domestic repression\"), and given the
\nrelatively poor civilian control over it, the military
\nauthorities would turn into sleeping dogs.<\/p>\n
Most people thought that the abolition in 1998 by president
\nB.J. Habibie of the military operations (DOM) in Aceh would mean,
\nnot only an end to the violence, but also the start of a serious
\nattempt at real peace.<\/p>\n
In fact, no such thing has materialized and, as it turned out,
\nthe introduction of the Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No.
\n4\/2001, which outlines six \"comprehensive\" steps to solve the
\nAceh question that includes a renewed permission for security and
\nlaw enforcement measures, has only caused violence to escalate.
\nSome have blamed the violence on the decree because it reportedly
\npromoted excessive militaristic measures.<\/p>\n
Many people also thought that the introduction of the special
\nautonomy for the region, which officially, is now called Nanggroe
\nAceh Darussalam, would appease the Acehnese and satisfy their
\ndemands for a greater empowerment and profits from the natural
\nresources. But it also has not apparently worked, as most
\nAcehnese have become too hardened and too resentful of the
\ncentral government to agree to any sort of cooperation with what
\nthey consider \"Javanese colonialists\".<\/p>\n
Though the region is now literally called \"the kingdom of
\npeace and prosperity,\" and a new fiscal arrangement will come
\ninto effect in January 2002, many Acehnese remain skeptical of
\nits effectiveness to solve the Aceh question.<\/p>\n
Legislator Ghazali Abbas recently pointed out that the
\nautonomy policy was drafted to ensure that Aceh would be free to
\nelect their own leaders and, with its own security personnel, to
\nmanage their security and legal affairs in the region. The
\nfinished legal products, however, was one that would keep power
\nand control deeply entrenched in the hands of the power brokers
\nin Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Besides, activists say, the new autonomy policy is by no means
\na solution to the Aceh conflict. \"If GAM rejects the policy, it
\ndoes not automatically give the government authority to
\nimmediately undertake repression,\" said Munir of an Indonesian
\nhuman rights organization, Kontras, recently, in response to
\nchief political minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's promise to no
\nlonger tolerate separatism in Aceh, especially after they
\nrejected the autonomy policy.<\/p>\n
In fact, many questions persist as the year 2001 draws to an
\nend. Why, if the military really wants peace to prevail in Aceh,
\nhas it established a command structure, the Kolakops, that
\nresembles the abolished military operation, DOM and which caused
\neven more deaths and human rights atrocities? Why has it planned
\nto establish a special command for Aceh when more than 91 percent
\nof Acehnese in Banda Aceh (according to a 1998 survey by the
\nUniversity of Indonesia's School of Social Sciences) believe that
\nthe Indonesian Military too often resorts to undue violence when
\nfacing a problem?<\/p>\n
Why has Aceh accepted as its governor Abdullah Puteh of
\nGolkar, a party that was also responsible for the introduction of
\nthe deadly operations in the late 1980s? Puteh was elected
\ndespite the reported breakdown of civilian bureaucracy in parts
\nof the region. Why have no serious attempts been taken to ensure
\nthat perpetrators of rights abuses in the region be held
\naccountable?<\/p>\n
As in any cycle where one end needs to meet the other in order
\nto exist as a cycle, each of the \"warring parties\" in Aceh needs
\nthe other's continued existence. It does not matter who initiates
\neach violent incident, the other side just retaliates. If
\nindependence groups, for instance, hit the government forces or
\ntheir assets, the security authorities merely hit back with an
\neven deadlier action, and the Acehnese again strike back with
\nequal ferocity. Each violent incident reaffirms the existence of
\nthe perpetrators, and increases their capacity to beget more
\nviolence. The losers are always the weak and the defenseless.<\/p>\n
A pebble inside one's shoe irritates one, but if one allows
\nthat pebble to be there long enough one develops a kind of
\nresistance and one's skin gets tougher where the pebble creates
\nthe friction. Such is the relation, perhaps, between the
\nIndonesian security authorities and the majority of Acehnese. The
\nmilitary authorities may indeed be irritated by GAM because the
\nmovement represents domestic instability, but the latter's
\npresence also serves many purposes and interests for the military
\nand police.<\/p>",
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